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Egypt Egypt, the Arabs, and Israel
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the question of Israel
became more vexing for the Arab states. In 1964, in spite of the
problems that existed among the various Arab states, Nasser
initiated Arab summit meetings that were held in January, March,
and September in Cairo and Casablanca. The immediate reason for
the summits was to find a way to block Israel's plan to divert
the waters of the Jordan River to irrigate the Negev Desert, a
plan that would deprive the lower Jordan River valley of water.
The Arab states drew up a plan that called for diverting the
Jordan River in Syria and Lebanon but did not implement it.
The Arab summit meetings also took up other matters. League
members agreed to created a unified military command, the United
Arab Command, with headquarters in Cairo, but this plan, like
that of diverting the Jordan River, remained on paper. The Arab
leaders did implement a plan to create the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) to be the primary organization of
Palestinians. The Arab governments, especially Egypt, were
becoming increasingly uneasy about the growing activities of
Palestinian guerrillas, and they wanted to create an organization
through which they could control such operations. They created
the Palestine Liberation Army, whose units would be stationed and
controlled by Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Egypt exercised control of
the PLO until 1969 when Yasir Arafat, the leader of the guerrilla
organization called Al Fatah, took control of the organization
from Ahmad Shukairy, the choice of the Arab League governments.
Data as of December 1990
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